Cigar plain packaging: importers seek hand-rolled exemption

Hunters & Frankau, which has imported Cuban cigars into the UK for more than 230 years, says it would have to cut its portfolio by 75 per cent if it is required to supply cigars in plain packaging under the Tobacco and Vapes Act. Importers want hand-rolled cigars exempted, and a government consultation on the packaging rules closes on 2 October.

The Act received Royal Assent in April, with provisions taking effect between now and 2029. Its central measure, a ban on selling tobacco to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009, follows a plan announced by Rishi Sunak in 2023.

The government has refused to exempt handmade cigars from plain packaging in the legislation. Baroness Merron, a health minister, told the House of Lords: “It is absolutely not this government’s intention for any future packaging requirements to put any small businesses, including specialist tobacconists, out of business.”

“Seventy per cent of the cigar market in the UK is Cuban,” said Jemma Freeman, chairman of Hunters & Frankau, which supports hundreds of small businesses across the UK and Gibraltar.

She said: “If Hunters & Frankau are in a position where we have to provide plain packaging, we believe we will have to reduce our portfolio by 75 per cent. If that happens, the specialist tobacconists can’t survive, the numbers don’t work.”

Each box of Cuban cigars already carries a government-issued sticker, added in Havana under strict security conditions, bearing a hologram, bar code and date stamp that establish its value and provenance.

Freeman said top-tier suppliers such as Habanos would take a dim view of plans to wrap cigars individually and in plain paper, asking: “If they are taken out of their packaging, which is part and parcel of their presentation and their intrinsic value, and if the importing nation cannot maintain the integrity of the unit, why would they send it to the market?”

Exporting countries raise concerns

Ambassadors to the UK from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Honduras wrote to Sir Keir Starmer in October 2025 setting out how the legislation would damage their export economies, and the Department of Health and Social Care responded with the case for the changes.

The ambassadors are understood to have written back in February, questioning the lack of “product-specific analysis that treats handmade cigars as a distinct category separate from mass-market tobacco products” and emphasising that “handmade cigars account for significantly less than 1 per cent of UK tobacco consumption”.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, said the government was “ignoring all the evidence, trampling over respected WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules and failing to respond to the ambassadors of cigar exporting countries”.

Eddie Sahakian, who is taking over Davidoff of London from his father, Edward, sees the legislation as the end game for the shop.

ASH says cigars should not be exempt

Helen Duffy, a representative of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said on LBC that young people have started smoking with cigarillos and that cigars therefore cannot have an exemption.

According to IRI, a market research agency, only 2.5 million of the 400 million cigars sold in the UK in 2024 are estimated to have been hand-rolled, with the rest machine-made cigarillos such as King Edwards.

Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of ASH, said that “regardless of how they are made, or where they are from, cigars are tobacco products and are harmful to health”.

She added: “The government is right to consider communicating that fact through standardised packaging. When the government exempted cigars from previous legislation, the tobacco industry exploited the loophole to market cigarillos to younger consumers and consumption increased. Cigar shops have already adapted to standard pack laws in Canada, New Zealand and Ireland so there is no reason why the same cannot happen in the UK.”

Importers say none of those countries consumes large volumes of cigars, and argue that giving wealthy people another reason not to spend money in London would be self-sabotage.

The government’s consultation on tobacco and vape packaging proposes extending standardised packaging and picture warnings to all cigars and cigarillos. Individually wrapped cigars do not currently need picture warnings, the consultation states. It closes at 11:59pm on 2 October.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk